Cleaning A Dog's Ears – Veterinary Training

your complications and pets is one of the most common reasons owners bring their pets to the veterinarian as veterinary professionals we will most likely see pets with ear conditions on a daily basis in most cases the first step in treating and preventing an ear condition is with a thorough ear cleaning in this video we will discuss how to safely and appropriately clean a pets ears in most cases a thorough cleaning of the entire ear canal is the first step in treating an ear infection however it may be a good idea to clean the ears more routinely to help prevent future infections ear infections are often caused by allergy related issues foreign bodies in the ear and often even the actual anatomy of the pets ears this is Jack he's going to help us demonstrate how to clean ears today and this is Kelsey our handler now it's always important to have a handler when you're doing this because you're working up around the face and the mouth you want to make sure that you have good control of the head so Kelsey is going to help get him positioned here ideally if he's an animal that's going to want to back up on you you'll want to put him up against the wall or in the corner so we can move him to the corner a little bit and then Kelsey is just going to help restrain his muzzle in the back of his head and with the ear there's actually two canals there's a vertical canal and then there's a horizontal canal the vertical canal and the horizontal canal almost make an L or a 90 degree turn from each other so as you're cleaning the ear you're actually going to want to just gently pull the ear up and out away from the head to open up this area down here now for this you're going to use a veterinary approved ear cleaner some cotton balls or cotton swabs and some gloves to prevent any debris or fluid from getting on your hands you may also want to have a towel handy just to keep us dry during this process hey Jack so again pulling the ear gently away from the head and up just to open up those canals in there you're going to actually just take the fluid and pour straight in there I know it's a little cold and you want to filled up the ear canal all the way till you see the fluid at this point it's completely full you're going to take this area down here and just gently massage in a circular motion with maybe an emphasis on the upward part of your circular motion this will help loosen any debris that may be sitting in there and oftentimes we'll hear a squishing sound when you do this boy this is where things can get a little bit messy because the next option is to have the towel handy to keep us dry because as you see Jack wants to shake his head so I'm just going to place this over and that kept us a little bit dry as you shook your head and what that did was help loosen any debris that was further in there bringing up to the outer area for you to be able to take your cotton swab and just gently wipe away any debris that you see in there now depending on the amount of debris in the ear you may want to repeat this process several times but Jack's ears look really good so I think we're just going to move on to the other side again pulling the ear gently away from the head and up you're going to fill up the ear canal with your fluid we're at the top massage in a circular motion again with the emphasis on upwards here that nice squishing sound and using the towel just to shield us from the shaking now I'm going to demonstrate how to clean the ear using a q-tip now this is something that should only be done in a veterinary office I would never recommend that you tell a client to use a q-tip at home when cleaning the ears as it can be dangerous you want to make sure that your patient is very well restrained for this as well and you only want to clean what's in the vertical canal so as you can see from Jack shaking some of the debris has already moved to the outer pinna but with the q-tip we're just going to insert it into these little folds making sure that we never go past where we can see and just remove that debris that's moved out once the ear is clean I just want to make sure that you give lots of praise good job and this concludes how to properly clean a pets ears you